The U.S. presidential election of 1900 was held on November 6, 1900. A rematch of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and his Democratic challenger from Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, the recent victory in the Spanish-American War virtually assured McKinley re-election.
Nominations
Republican Party nomination
The 926 Republican delegates to the Republican convention chose to renominate William McKinley by acclamation. Party leaders, thinking they would slide him into a position of relative obscurity, supported Spanish-American War Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt of New York as the Vice Presidential nominee, replacing Garret A. Hobart, who died in 1899.
Democratic Party nomination
William Jennings Bryan was easily renominated at the 1900 Democratic National Convention, garnering 936 delegate votes. Former Vice President Adlai Stevenson was nominated for the office again, beating out David B. Hill, Abram W. Patrick and Julian S. Carr for the nomination.
Other nominations
The Populist Party, which four years earlier had supported Bryan, this time went their own way, nominating a ticket of Wharton Barker and Ignatius Donnelly. Eugene Debs made his first bid for president in 1900 as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party.
General election
Campaign
The economy was booming in 1900, so the Republican mantra for this campaign was "Four More Years of the Full Dinner Pail". The Democrats scrambled to find an issue to unseat the Republicans. Bryan's big issue from the previous election, free silver, resonated only in economic hard times, and was further weakened by inflation from gold discoveries in Alaska and South Africa. Bryan also attempted, with limited success, to run against the McKinley administration's imperialism and against problems in the conduct of the Spanish-American War of two years previous, such as the procurement of rotten beef as provisions for the troops. The Democrats were unsuccessful, and McKinley won reelection.
Results
| Presidential candidate | Party | Home state | Popular vote | Electoral vote |
Running mate | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Percentage | Vice-presidential candidate | Home state | Electoral vote | ||||
| William McKinley | Republican | Ohio | 7,228,864 | 51.6% | 292 | Theodore Roosevelt | New York | 292 |
| William Jennings Bryan | Democratic | Nebraska | 6,370,932 | 45.5% | 155 | Adlai Ewing Stevenson | Illinois | 155 |
| John Granville Woolley | Prohibition | Illinois | 210,864 | 1.5% | 0 | Henry Brewer Metcalf | Ohio | 0 |
| Eugene Victor Debs | Social-Democratic | Indiana | 87,945 | 0.6% | 0 | Job Harriman | California | 0 |
| Wharton Barker | Populist | Pennsylvania | 50,989 | 0.4% | 0 | Ignatius Donnelly | Minnesota | 0 |
| Joseph Francis Maloney | Socialist Labor | Massachusetts | 40,943 | 0.3% | 0 | Valentine Remmel | Pennsylvania | 0 |
| Seth Hockett Ellis | Union Reform | Ohio | 5,696 | 0.0% | 0 | Samuel T. Nicholson | Pennsylvania | 0 |
| Other | 1,193 | 0.0% | — | Other | — | |||
| Total | 13,997,426 | 100% | 447 | 447 | ||||
| Needed to win | 224 | 224 | ||||||